Pages

Friday, November 11, 2005

[The following monologue was overheard in a fifth-grade classroom in Topeka, Kansas.]

[P.S.: How did I end up out there? I forgot where I left my car keys. I checked everywhere in my house -- couldn't find them. Under beds, in every coat pocket, you name it. I looked in Fall River, then New England, then worked my way west. Somewhere in Nebraska, I realized they were in the car I was driving.]

For today's science lesson, boy and girl young'uns, we're going to have a little fun. We've been working hard all year, understanding how the dinosaurs weren't good enough to get on the ark and so became fossils, and how the sky is made up of the Heaven Level, the Angels Level, the Outer Space Level, the Cloud Level, and the Guardian Angels Level.

But I want to take it a little easier today -- let's find out how Twinkies are made! Yay!

No, Amy, we're not going on a field trip to buy Twinkies. We can learn all about Twinkie creation right here -- in this a-here science classroom -- using the state-mandated Intelligent Design theory!

No, Al, going on a field trip to buy Twinkies would not be more fun.

Now begins our story, dating back a long, long time ago, either six billion years ago or in the 1950s. Mankind the world over was feeling peckish. People all around the earth were wondering if there was anything else in the house to eat during the football game -- something like cake, but not a whole cake.

Kids like you all were crying out, too. They were desperate for some kind of portable snack that could fill the obvious hole in the pastry segment of the lunch-swapping open market.

And so the Intelligent Designer heard mankind's calls. He or she -- ah, screw it, it was he -- bestowed the food we now know as the Twinkie upon the earth's stores, both grocery and convenience. One day, they just showed up, at the end of the aisle with the paper towels. And ever since that day, we scientists have found their origin a wondrous, tantalizing mystery that we probably should never look into.

Apart from that story, we Intelligent Design scientists really can't explain how Twinkies are made, exactly. So we're giving up.

You see, kids, your Twinkie is extremely complex, too complex for it to be a randomly created foodstuff. Think for a minute. How is it that a Twinkie is just big enough for your hand, without being too small? How does the sponge cake stay spongy even after weeks, months, years on the shelf? Why are there two per package when you get just one Devil Dog? These are questions that science alone cannot answer adequately, and that Intelligent Design will not bother to answer at all.

What's that, Susan? You thought Twinkies were made in a factory?

Go stand in the corner, Susan.

Good. Now face the wall.

It frightens me, the kind of nonsense you all hear when you leave these protected walls of my classroom. My guess is, someone was fed that particular slice of baloney from Hollywood liberals and the mainstream media.

What Martin Sheen won't tell you is that the Factory Theory of Twinkie Production is flawed. It's controversial. It doesn't have all the answers.

Sure, most biologists believe in it, and it's the basis of all modern snack food manufacture. But most non-Kansan biologists are evil.

No, Ben, Martin Sheen is not a good actor. He is a very, very bad actor. I want you this minute to face your desk toward the window and write it 150 times. "Martin Sheen is a very, very bad actor."

There are certain holes in the Factory Theory that traditional, left-wing science leaves unfilled. Yes, some scientists suspect there may be factories producing Twinkies somewhere in America. But where? I've never been to one. I've never seen one.

No, Sean, I never went looking for one, either. You just bought yourself a detention.

On television and in such ultra-liberal radical atheist Marxist fringe publications as The New York Times, you may have seen what some scientists described as "baking molds" and "assembly-line-style conveyor belts" and "packaging machines" that mankind could use to produce Twinkies.

They're fibbing.

And they'd rather Saddam was still in power.

Plus, there's really no way to tell for sure what those baking molds are for. They could be for Funny Bones or Ring-Dings. The facts are disputed!

It also makes more logical sense that the Twinkie is a product of Intelligent Design. I have here a package of actual Twinkies on my desk -- check out these ingredients! Monounsatumacallit? What is this stuff? Made in a factory? Mankind can't even pronounce it.

And how do you suppose the creme filling gets in the middle of a sealed yellow tube of cake? Injection by some ... machine? It would be really nice if we lived in "Star Trek," but we don't. The clear answer is that either the Intelligent Designer creates the filling first and then bakes the cake around it, or makes the cake first and permeates its outer layer with the creme in some transdimensional fashion that the human brain cannot understand. Am I using too much science jargon?

What's that, Mikey? You say there are holes in the bottom of a Twinkie where the creme goes in? What are you talking about? I've never seen any such holes -- you can't prove there are any holes. Just because you say there are holes doesn't put them there, kid. Are you a scientist?

Wait -- is that a Twinkie of your own? Are you brandishing a Twinkie at me? You put that snack away this instant, young man!

Yes, of course I can see three holes! For all I know you poked them in there yourself with your finger as part of the liberal agenda!

Principal's office, now!

And stay out.

Ahem.

So as I was saying before the hippie love-in -- of course, every Intelligent Design Twinkie theorist already knows about the three-hole phenomenon. We've known about it for some time. At this point, the holey trinity is yet another source of mystery that it is not science's job to explore.

The end!

Let's divide up these four Twinkies among the 24 of you! Now, using the Intelligent Design Theory of Arithmetic, I know that each Twinkie must be cut into six pieces -- but I'm not sure how I got to that number. And I don't want to know.

About Me

Dan Medeiros is a copy editor and a freelance writer. He has a master's degree in creative writing and has published several short stories and many more columns and articles. He once briefly was both a reader for the literary magazine Ploughshares and a member of Mensa, which is not all it's cracked up to be. Believe me. He has a wife, two dogs, and two cats.

Copyright info, or: What the hell is this?

Posts labeled "Columns" were originally written for The Herald News. They are reprinted here with permission in slightly edited form, often with extra material not seen in the print versions, and sometimes profanity. Posts with other labels appear here for the first time. They also contain profanity.